Family: Can’t Live With ‘Em, Can’t Assault Them With Your Vibrator

There are likely, certain members of your family which you’re not overly fond of, but rarely is the answer for resolving your differences, battering them with something lathered in your own personal juices. Or, maybe it is, maybe I just don’t know how to properly express my feelings.

It is difficult to watch when a close-knit family is pulled apart by an object of love. This is one of the reasons why the story of a New Mexico woman allegedly assaulting her mother with her vibrator is so painful.

Our plastic pleasure toys are put on this planet to give joy to those who purchase them–or, by extension, those with whom the purchaser wishes to share them. An adult marital aide is conceived of and created with nothing but good times in mind. So to see a creation of good being used for evil like this: It just breaks my heart.

The accused: Cara Claffy. The charge: “Assault with a Hilarious Weapon”… Probably.

There are two sides to every story of vibrational assault. The police report states (written, no doubt, through a series of chuckles and head shakes of bemused disbelief) that the alleged victim, a Sheryl Claffy, called police after a quiet night of television-viewing with her daughter when her daughter erupted in a brutal bludgeoning with the accused’s vibrator. The question that comes to mind first is: Why was this object–usually reserved for quiet, discrete alone times–the first weapon grabbed in the heat of the (completely non-sexual) moment? I’m almost certain I don’t actually want an ANSWER to that question; I’m just saying it’s the first that comes to mind.

Meanwhile, the accused, 35-year-old Cara Claffy, has a different recollection of the evening’s festivities. When questioned, she informed the officer that her mother emerged from a back room, bleeding from a wound on the head. The concerned daughter inquired as to what had befallen her beloved mother. Her bloodied mother informed her that “she had struck herself with a vibrator”. Which, you know, is completely plausible.

There are a multitude of possible explanations for how this might have occurred. Allow me to present the first three that immediately spring to my mind: 1) Sheryl, unfamiliar at 60 years of age with the workings of “personal massagers,” thought the intended use of the device was to apply to one’s head repeatedly in order to accomplish internet (old people don’t understand that stuff), unfortunately resulting in the blunt force trauma to her head. 2) Having borrowed her daughter’s vibrator, the no doubt slick instrument may have slipped from the elderly Claffy’s grasp during her throws of passion, launching itself into the air and crashing down upon head. Or even still, 3) As part of a unique brand of masochism, Sheryl can only get pleasure from assaulting herself with synthetic penises and this time it got out of hand. In each of these situations, Sheryl was embarrassed and blamed her daughter.

Or I guess there’s option 4) Cara is lying.

But at this point, with Cara behind bars in lieu of a $3500, who really wins in this scenario? The real victim here is the poor innocent vibrator, just trying to provide the pleasure that it was manufactured for. It’s always the little ones that are hurt most by domestic violence.